ON THE NATURE OF LOVE

A Homily by
James Ishmael Ford

12 November 2000

So, what is it we might find as a common theme running through today’s worship service, where among other things we encounter a dedication read from one of our Hymnbooks, concern expressed for a family in Roxbury, and a lament of Cyrano de Bergerac? Each, of course, I hope is moderately obvious, speaks to the mysteries of love.

Today is dedicated as a dialogue sermon. I will speak as briefly as I can on the subject of love. I hope to explore just a little what it might possibly mean. But, then, here we follow the traditions of our liberal faith and this congregation, where we proclaim our trust in the human heart and our own minds to find a way through. Today, mostly, will be dedicated to our shared reflections.

Now, as we begin, here is a brief poem. "The soul selects her own society,/Then shuts the door;/on her divine majority/Obtrude no more.//Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing/at her low gate;/Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling/Upon her mat.//I’ve known her from an ample nation/Choose one;/Then close the valves of her attention/Like Stone."

I found this poem by Emily Dickinson quoted by Melvin Konner, at the head of his chapter on "Love," in his book The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit. As just a small aside, before going much farther, I should mention how I hate Melvin Konner.

That book, The Tangled Wing, a 543 page opus on sociobiology was written by Konner, at the time an associate professor of biological anthropology at Harvard, while on leave to, can one say, "pick up his M.D."? When one turns to the dust jacket at the back we learn how in addition to these things, he is the author of "numerous scholarly monographs," as well as being a published poet of merit.

After earning his M.D. he moved to Emory to become professor of anthropology as well as an associate professor of psychiatry and Neurology. His bio blurb at that school speaks of his social activism and particularly how "lately he has spent time advocating single-payer health reform…" I take small comfort in seeing that the distressingly handsome young author pictured in the Tangled Wing, in his photo online at Emory, at least is aging.

Me jealous? How could anyone think such a thing? And, I hope no one here wishes to tie those emotions, love and jealousy together. Or, then again, maybe we should. There is a question. How does the range of human emotions wrap together? Love does appear to have a court wherein jealousy, envy, hatred as well as compassion and equanimity all have a place.

Here, it seems, as we reflect on love, we find everything is revealed. So, in our quest for that "everything" let’s start with some of the research. In his chapter on love, which begins with a reflection on his intense feelings for his daughter, Konner summarizes much of the scientific research as follows.

"Powerful neural and neuroendocrine control functions insure the development of some forms of affectional behavior even in the most abnormal circumstances…" Love appears, he tells us. And, it appears to be hardwired. As he explains "The affectional emotions and the affectional behaviors apparently depend on an underlying set of common structures…" But just to keep things complex, Konner then states how, "These structures are responsive to experience, in both enduring and transient ways..."

What I hear him saying is yes indeed, in the great nature/nurture controversy, we are indeed the product of both nature and nurture. Should we hope for any understanding of human love, we must not turn away from the obvious, from the evidence of our research: we are the products of genes and of experiences. And love arises from this mix.

Indeed, this may be said of all our strong emotions, the full company in love’s court: hate, jealousy, compassion, generosity. Each emerges out of the meeting of our biology and our environment. Certainly it is here the proverbial rubber hits the road. Here, as we feel, as we experience, we find the meeting of our biological structures and our environment weaving something: a reality, creating our lived reality.

Again, after ruminating on all this, Konner finds a poet helpful in setting the stage for his most important observation. This time he quotes the immortal Sappho. "To me that man equals a god/as he sits before you and listens/closely to your sweet voice//and lovely laughter—which troubles/the heart in my ribs. For now/as I look at you my voice fails,//my tongue is broken and thin fire/runs like a thief through my body./My eyes are dead to light, my ears//pound, and sweat pours down over me./I shudder, I am paler than grass,/and am intimate with dying…"

Here we see once jealousy, and then love. What a raging forest fire! Love, without a doubt, without the faintest shade of hesitation, is the most powerful, terrifying, mysterious force within our human lives. Whether it can be reduced to chemicals blending as our bodies or whether it can properly be named God, hardly matters in the rawness of our actual experience.

So, where does this take us? Konner ends his sociobiological rumination on love by alluding to Adrienne Rich’s powerful homoerotic love poetry as possibly, he tells us, "the most beautiful love poems written in English in the mid-twentieth century…" Konner observes how arguably the best love poems of the twentieth century, are about gay love, are outside our generally accepted ideas of norms.

And he concludes on that note. "It is a fitting way," he writes. "I think to end a chapter about love; and I must hasten to assure the reader that I have nothing useful to say about it, except, There it is." What a wonderful line! Konner says it all: There it is.
But, actually, he does have just a little more to add. Konner tells us "And to all such mysteries, to all such incomprehensible possibility, I say, Bravo." So here we find ourselves, I think. When we speak of love, we find ourselves facing something more than mere physical description can ever convey, more than any list of parts can speak to. Love is that more which is beyond the sum of parts.

Here as we confront the actual mystery of love, we really are walking on sacred ground, we really are facing a god so terrifying and compelling, we should take off our shoes, we should cover our heads, and we should avert our eyes. Because, I believe, we cannot know what love is straight on, through our analysis. We need to do that I hasten to add. We need to take things apart and understand their structures. This need is a part of our humanity.

But, we also need to know we will never understand love through its parts. To really understand love we need, instead, to engage it, in this Meeting Room, in our own lives, and in another manner entirely. We may find it more clearly from the corner of the eye, from an oblique comment, from a poem. So Konner, once again, I think, even trembling with jealousy as I might be, points the way for us all with all his poetic quotations in that chapter.

The great American Zen master Robert Aitken is fond of quoting one of his first teachers R. H. Blyth, who said. "Zen is not psychology. Zen is poetry." Here I say love is not psychology, or biology or any of the disciplines that study it. While we need to remember genes and pheromones and all that great biological mass, as well as history, as engagement over time; when considering love, we also need to heed that warning. We need to remember, to feel the great animal, the living reality. We need to remember the "there it is" of it. Love is not genes. Love is poetry.

With this reflection, I need to step out of the pulpit, and turn the conversation over to you, to our gathered community of faith. True poetry sings within our pews ever more than here in the pulpit. So, let me ask you. What are your thoughts? What do you say love might be? How has loved touched your heart? What is the movement of love in your animal being?

(A time for conversation)

There it is. Bravo.

Now, let me conclude with one more poem of love. It is from one of my favorite poets, Lynn Ungar, the author of a single slender volume published as one of our UUA meditation manuals, Blessing the Bread. She calls it "Common Prayer." I hope it is a common prayer, for each of us.

"Sunday morning at the marina/Barely enough wind to keep the kites aloft/and so we drifted to the ground/to nibble bagels, chocolate,/giant loose-skinned oranges,/random poetry, blades of grass/Sacraments and indulgences/for the first of Spring.

"And in the moment before sleep/my breast against your arm/sang Gloria/and the soles of my feet/cried Sanctus to the sun/Placing the last chocolate/in your mouth I whispered/"This is my body, take and eat/and we melted, very slowly,/on the earth’s tongue."

There it is. Bravo. Amen.